Q's: DVD and QAM quality

[dennit]

Miscellaneous questions I can't find answers to:

I'm having trouble getting .iso files to play. I've got Daemon and have specified the path to the exe. Is the drive letter that is specified in config supposed to be any unused letter available for daemon, or is it supposed to be the letter that daemon usually mounts on? I don't have any trouble mounting or playing these files outside of GBPVR, but I must be doing something wrong.

Second: does the "quality" setting you can choose when selecting a program to record have any effect when recording from a QAM source? I would have expected the incoming video data to be merely written to the hard drive, not encoded or transcoded before being written.

Related to 2 above: is there a way to specify the default quality for analog (or QAM digital if it does have an effect)? If so, where is this setting found?

Thanks for any help!

[sub]

I'm having trouble getting .iso files to play. I've got Daemon and have specified the path to the exe. Is the drive letter that is specified in config supposed to be any unused letter available for daemon, or is it supposed to be the letter that daemon usually mounts on? I don't have any trouble mounting or playing these files outside of GBPVR, but I must be doing something wrong.

You're supposed to supply the driver letter that daemon tools will normally mount on. This is so that GB-PVR knows which drive to attempt to play after asking daemon tools to map the drive.

Do you se the drive getting mounted?

Second: does the "quality" setting you can choose when selecting a program to record have any effect when recording from a QAM source? I would have expected the incoming video data to be merely written to the hard drive, not encoded or transcoded before being written.

No, it has no effect on digital recordings. In this case the quality is determine by the broadcaster prior to transmission.

In digital only setups it doesnt bother to show the quality setting.

Related to 2 above: is there a way to specify the default quality for analog (or QAM digital if it does have an effect)? If so, where is this setting found?

In the config app capture source settings you can edit the "medium" profile to set whatever defaults you prefer (bitrate/resolution etc).

[dennit]

You're supposed to supply the driver letter that daemon tools will normally mount on. This is so that GB-PVR knows which drive to attempt to play after asking daemon tools to map the drive.

Do you see the drive getting mounted?

I tried it both ways (a free letter and the normal letter), and no, I don't see the drive being mounted, just black screen - but I'm not sure what I should see. I'm normally running full screen - perhaps I should run in windowed mode and check.

EDIT: just checked - config seems to be defaulting to thinking daemon.exe is in program files, while I've got it in a different location. I probably need a reboot to clear something. Every time I change it it pops back to wrong. I'll do some tests and report back when I've figured out what's going on. Thanks for the help so far.

No, it has no effect on digital recordings. In this case the quality is determine by the broadcaster prior to transmission.
In digital only setups it doesnt bother to show the quality setting.

Thanks. That's what I figured

In the config app capture source settings you can edit the "medium" profile to set whatever defaults you prefer (bitrate/resolution etc).

OK, great, I knew it had to be there somewhere. I'm running some quality tests, but does "high" quality usually show noticeable improvement over medium for analog with a decent signal?

[sub]

I tried it both ways (a free letter and the normal letter), and no, I don't see the drive being mounted - but I'm not sure what I should see.

Try it, then zip and attach the pvxr2.exe.log and I'll take a look.

OK, great, I knew it had to be there somewhere. I'm running some quality tests, but does "high" quality usually show noticeable improvement over medium for analog with a decent signal?

No, I dont think so. The defaults for 'medium' are a relatively high variable bitrate, and usually give a pretty good picture.

[dennit]

config seems to be defaulting to thinking daemon.exe is in program files, while I've got it in a different location. I probably need a reboot to clear something. Every time I change it it pops back to wrong. I'll do some tests and report back when I've figured out what's going on.

Hmmmm. (I did reboot) I set the correct location and drive for daemon in config under DVD. It takes it and keeps it as long as I'm in config. I say OK, but when I come back into config, it's changed to an incorrect location and an incorrect drive letter. OTOH, it does remember where I tried to set it, because when I try to browse to reset to the correct location, it starts the browser in the correct location, not in the incorrect location. I suppose I could reinstall daemon to the default location under Program Files? Is that what you suggest, or would posting logs help.

[dennit]

Try it, then zip and attach the pvxr2.exe.log and I'll take a look.

I've checked the logs, including pvrx2.exe.log and config.exe.log. config tries to save the wrong location for daemon/wrong drive letter and pvrx2 tries to execute it from the wrong location/drive letter and receives an error when mounting.

I wonder if the database (or wherever config is storing the daemon file location) is corrupted somehow. I did have a case where I inadvertently had two copies of config running (I think). Is it crazy to consider going directly into the db and fixing this, instead of through config?

I don't think this is of much value, but .......

Here is config (looks OK to me - no errors anywhere, but this is the incorrect location and different from what I entered and saw for the daemon location in config when I closed it, but the same as what I saw when reentering config):

Code:

2008-07-07 07:51:36.750    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue() loading new key/value into cache: /settings/DaemonToolsExe
2008-07-07 07:51:36.750    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue: /settings/DaemonToolsExe : C:\Program Files\DAEMON Tools\daemon.exe
2008-07-07 07:51:36.750    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue() loading new key/value into cache: /settings/DaemonToolsDrive
2008-07-07 07:51:36.750    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue: /settings/DaemonToolsDrive : W:
2008-07-07 07:51:36.750    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue() loading new key/value into cache: /settings/DaemonToolsDeviceNumber
2008-07-07 07:51:36.750    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue: /settings/DaemonToolsDeviceNumber : 0

Here is pvrx2.exe with the mounting for playback error:

Code:

2008-07-06 21:32:06.419    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue: /settings/DaemonToolsExe : C:\Program Files\DAEMON Tools\daemon.exe
2008-07-06 21:32:06.419    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue() loading new key/value into cache: /settings/DaemonToolsDeviceNumber
2008-07-06 21:32:06.419    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue: /settings/DaemonToolsDeviceNumber : 0
2008-07-06 21:32:06.419    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue() loading new key/value into cache: /settings/DaemonToolsDrive
2008-07-06 21:32:06.419    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue: /settings/DaemonToolsDrive : W:
2008-07-06 21:32:06.419    VERBOSE    [1]    Executing: C:\Program Files\DAEMON Tools\daemon.exe -unmount 0
2008-07-06 21:32:06.434    VERBOSE    [1]    Unexpected error mounting volume: System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The system cannot find the file specified
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.StartWithShellExecuteEx(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start()
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(String fileName, String arguments)
   at GBPVRX2.Players.x2a148ffd35c37d14.x64fff8c5415b9fc5(String xb2ac3fdb71f19c57)
2008-07-06 21:32:06.434    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue() loading new key/value into cache: /settings/DaemonToolsPrePlayDelay
2008-07-06 21:32:06.434    VERBOSE    [1]    getValue: /settings/DaemonToolsPrePlayDelay : 4500
2008-07-06 21:32:10.934    VERBOSE    [1]    About to play DVD volume: W:\
2008-07-06 21:32:11.372    VERBOSE    [1]    After PlayDVD()
2008-07-06 21:32:11.388    VERBOSE    [1]    Playback started: W:\

[sub]

Try manually editting the <DaemonToolsExe> setting in the config.xml file instead.

[dennit]

Try manually editting the <DaemonToolsExe> setting in the config.xml file instead.

Thanks, this did it!

Once I edited the config.xml file, I saw an odd pair of messages from daemon asking for confirmation of "secure mode" execution of the commands from pvrx2. Clicking OK did not produce video. However, going into the Options of daemon tools I find a "secure mode" setting I was unfamiliar with. Turning that off produced video in PVRX2 (with an autostart overlay asking me what I want to do.) Telling it to always do nothing on load avoids the popu and produced correct operation by PVRX2. Problem solved.

For the record - I'm using: Daemon Tools Lite 4.12.3
Edit:
Apparently this setting was fairly recently turned on by default to prevent other programs from unmounting a daemon mounted iso. This problem may be seen by others who use a recent version of daemon tools.